Continuing through October 24, 2026
The story at the core of “Lava Thomas: Lineage” begins with Thomas’s portrait of her great-great-great-grandfather, Charles Arthur, whose likeness she crafted from a photograph attached to a deposition. Born free to an enslaved father, Arthur had the first legal Black marriage in Wise County, Texas. “Mr. Charles H. Arthur (Determination)” (2022) is drawn entirely in graphite. Standing at nearly seven feet tall, we can take in every detail of Arthur: the ripple of his jacket, the sheen on his draped pants, his direct and unforgiving gaze.
Despite the work’s large scale, small indications of Arthur’s precarious position as a newly freed person born in 19th-century Texas peek out from the portrait. The cuff of his pants is misaligned, his shirtsleeves are mismatched and the tie of his shirt protrudes. Yet these details recede in relation to his arresting gaze, saturated with confidence and, as the subtitle terms it determination. By taking a small image from a legal document and reimagining it beyond life-size, Thomas restores dignity to one of her ancestors.
That process becomes even more apparent in the portrait of Arthur’s wife, “Mrs. Elizabeth ‘Bettie’ Arthur (Steadfast)”(all images dated 2026). The image of Thomas’ great-great-great-grandmother hangs next to a re-creation of her death certificate, flatly titled “Her Death Certificate,” also drawn in graphite. We learn that Bettie’s actual cause of death (pellagra and “want of proper nutrition”) stands in contrast to her official newsprint obituary, reproduced in “Her Obituary,” in which attributes her passing to being “practically worn out” and subject to “an illness of only a few days.”
Thomas’s exquisite graphite rendering becomes particularly apparent in the rich textural detail of Elizabeth Arthur’s shawl. That she meets our eyes directly is made even more vivid by the brown watercolor used to paint her eyes, a feature all the portraits share (with the exception of the first work of Charles Arthur). Thomas uses a very fine brush to achieve the tiny lines of the irises, with the brown standing out in the otherwise gray-and-white compositions.
A portrait of the son of Charles and Elizabeth Arthur, “I Stand Upright in My Own Regard” (2026), hangs on an adjacent wall. His upward mobility is apparent — he’s in finer dress, with the Freemasons ring on his finger attesting to his social engagement. He’s posed next to a wicker settee, which might have been a prop of the studio photographer. The errant buttoning of his too-large jacket, however, hints at the awkwardness of his newfound status. Next to him, a portrait of a woman who was likely his sister, “Grace and Bearing” (2026), includes additional signifiers of middle-class status: pearl necklace, coiffed hair, a satin wrap.
Not relying on crosshatching — her work is composed of individual fine lines — Thomas’s photorealistic drawing is precise and painstaking. She uses graphite and a conte pencil to achieve a velvety surface, with textural details ranging from the coils of hair to the draped fabric.
It takes Thomas months, and sometimes years, to complete each portrait, and sometimes years because she alternates between working on multiple images. This devotion of time allows the artist to re-animate past lives with dedication and care. Knowing how labor-intensive they are forces us to spend time gazing at portraits that earn our attention. Some of the photographs she’s drawn from are only two-inch squares. In magnifying them she enhances their historical importance.
By contrast, Thomas spent only an hour drawing a small, watery looking portrait of Julia Earhart Halsell, the person who enslaved her relatives. Halsell is given the euphemistic description of “mistress” in the obituary of Thomas’s great-great-great-grandmother.
Literacy is a theme that runs through the show, with textual fragments hung alongside the portraits. In “Her Mark” (2026) the work reads: “I have understood and heard above read and I am correctly recorded. I cannot write.” Sandwiched between her signature is an “X” that symbolizes her acknowledgment: her mark. The 1865 proclamation leading to Juneteenth is rendered in “General Order, No. 3,” along with the Civil Rights Act of 1866 giving all people citizenship. Questions of how they are viewed under the law necessarily contrasts to the full-throttle humanity made visible in the portraits’ detailing of every gorgeous wrinkle and gaze.
The only school in Wise County that educated Black students until segregation ended in 1965 is represented with a drawn replica of its historical marker, “East Side Elementary School,” and in a precise rendering of the school itself in “East Side Elementary Schoolhouse,” displayed in the front window of the gallery.
This is not Thomas’s first effort to restore respect to those overlooked by history. Previous work included drawings of people who participated in the Montgomery bus boycott. Now, in turning her attention to family members from her grandmother’s photo album, Thomas elevates an intimate personal story into a grand platform.
